History of Ubiquitous & Wearable Computing

Alexander Nelson

August 26, 2020

University of Arkansas - Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering

History of Ubiquituous Computing

Three Eras of Modern Computing

According to Roy Want, Modern computing can be characterized

by three eras:

1. Mainframe Computer

2. Personal Computer (PC)

3. Small networked portable computer products

These eras would be based on the dominant mode of computing in

that era

1

Prevalence of Computing

2

Diffusion of Computing

That characterization may be a little broad

New modes are adopted, and old modes are adapted

Ex: Mainframes?

• Cloud Computing

• PaaS/SaaS/IaaS offerings

3

Wireless Communications

Xerox PARC

Embedded devices should be able to communicate with nearby

devices & infrastructure

Need to limit communication range

Preserve bandwidth

4

Spatial Capacity

Spatial Capacity:

Weiser (1993) - Bits per second per cubic meter

Intel (2008) produced the following1:

• IEEE 802.11b 1,000 (bit/s)/m2

• Bluetooth 30,000 (bit/s)/m2

• IEEE 802.11a 83,000 (bit/s)/m2

• Ultra-wideband 1,000,000 (bit/s)/m2

1Bluetooth & UWB are evolving standards, and these numbers will have

changed

5

Spectral Efficiency

Spectral Efficiency –

How efficiently a protocol uses the available physical

communication channel

Given in terms of (bit/s)/Hz

6

Efficient Networking

Need to maximize use of bandwidth led to development of new

radio techniques

e.g.

• Bluetooth

• Near Field Communications (NFC)

• Zigbee

• WiFi

7

Invisible/Calm Computing

Xerox PARC

Tradtional computing paradigm – mouse keyboard – is attention

consuming and solitary

Weiser wanted to integrate computing into work practices instead

of as a separate activity

Ex. Reading printed pages does not require knowledge of the

techniques to produce the page

8

Invisible Computing

Computing that is invisible “gets out of the way”

Enables computing practices that don’t require specific knowledge

of the computer

9

Calm Computing

Traditional computing tries to “virtualize” the physical world

Make digital versions of physical objects inside the computing

environment

Calm computing is computerized versions of physical objects

e.g. E-book readers (Kindle, Nook, etc...)

10

Pads, Tabs, Boards

Pads, Tabs, Boards

Top: Tab & IR basestation, Left: Liveboard, Right: Pads

11

Minimum set of usable devices

PARC wanted to test Ubicomp ideas

Come up with the minimum set of products to produce to test

Imperial measurement analog:

• Tabs – inch scale devices, specific

• Pads – foot scale devices, more general

• Boards – yard scale device, immovable, part of the built

environment

12

Communication

Ceiling-mounted basestations creating a defacto microcellular

communication network

Basestations communicated with tabs using infrared (for low

power, would now use RF)

Pads communicated with basestaions using a short-range near-field

radio (3-4 meter range, 250kbps)

Boards wired into traditional computing workstation

13

Location

Tabs were easily carried, and could serve as location beacons

Led to the concept of context-aware computing

e.g. a Tab could be used to control the room temperature

14

Context-Aware Computing

Context is difficult to model, has many dimensions

e.g. location, user identity, other nearby devices, time, environment

PARC Tabs enabled orientation sensors to change the display

Also had an application called Proximity Browser to view files

accessed at the current location at a previous time

15

IBM Research: Pervasive

Computing

Pervasive Computing

IBM Mobile & Pervasive Computing –

mid 1990s

Business unit dedicated to

commercializing pervasive systems

In 1999, created a system for Swissair

passengers to use web-enabled cell

phones to check-in & board with just a

phone

16

Influence of Mobile on Pervasive & Ubiquitous

Wireless computing platforms running standard OSes became a

major driver of pervasive technology

Limiting platforms decreases development time

17

ITRON & Cooltown

ITRON

Professor Ken Sakamura from Tokyo University developed

T-Engines & the ITRON real-time operating system

Krikke, J., IEEE Pervasive Computing 4(2), 2005.

Open-source license, allow development, and improvement without

pushing changes back to source tree

18

Arduino & Raspberry Pi

Arduino

Open source hardware & software

Microcontroller kits for digital

devices

Large open-source community

Raspberry Pi

Small single-board computers

Debian Linux based

Large development community

19

Cooltown

Hewlett Packard (HP) – Tags implemented unique IDs or URLs so

that all objects have a web presence

Cooltown – Distributed system to represent people, places, and

things in the system

20

Other Ubiqiutous Computing

Applications

InfoPad

UC Berkeley (1998) – Access real-time media in indoor

environment

Used a thin-client model with two wireless radios:

• High-rate downlink for display updates

• Low-rate uplink for keys, mouse, pen events

21

Wearable Computing

Thorp & Shannon – Roulette timer (44% edge in roulette) 22

Wearable Computing

Glasses (2008) Twiddler – 47 WPM typing

23

Smart Objects

MediaCup (1997-2001)

University of Karlsruhe

Smart-Its

Collaboration between Karlsruhe

& other institutes

16 related projects

24

2007–Today

iPhone introduced in 2007

Smartphones sold by year25

2007–Today

Effect of IoT & Connected Its

Does NOT include computers, mobiles, tablets

Gartner (2017) reduces their numbers (8.4B 2017, 20.4B 2020)

26